News of the Week
THE League of :Nations AsSembly opens on Monday under sombre •- skies.• There is= the disarmament Crisis- overshadowing it—for there- will be no disposition at Geneva to take -Germany's challenge on- equality lightly—there is the Far Eastern situation, destined inevitably to reach a climax when. the Lytton Report comes to be- considered, . and there- is the League's own financial situation, which, with economy pressure on the one hand and the prospect of an increase in the number of- impecunious defaulters on the other, will need skilful- and tolerant handling. Even the admission of Iraq to League may not go through quite as smoothly as seemed likely, for the question of whether the Royal Air. Force squadrons which are to remain in Iraq are to be used for -frontier defence only, or to assist the Baghdad government in maintaining internal order also, will no doubt be pressed, as it should be, till a satisfactory assurance is forthcoming. Bombing Kurdish villages for- the benefit of Baghdad is no work for the R.A.F. The Assembly provides an invaluable meeting-place for statesmen...of _different_ countrieS, and their personal tollaboration• was never more needed than to-day. But the meetings themselves promise to be less important than usual, since disarmament is out of the Assembly's hands, and the Manchurian question will not be formally is them till the Lytton Report, whose publication is expected next week, has been digested. That will no doubt provide work for a special Assembly in November.
